By Rich Morris

I eat play dough
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Leeds University Student Union, Friday 5 November 2010

The crowd here tonight is definitely not made up of regular gig goers. That much will become obvious when they start dropping like over-emotional flies. In fact, the first one goes mere minutes into Cocknbullkid's set and by the time Marina and the Diamonds are midway into their set the ladies' toilets are (I'm reliably informed by my female friend) packed with girls suffering from advanced states of exhaustion.

Not that there's anything wrong with this being a different crowd to the one Soundblab is used to mixing with, but when they fail to applaud Cocknbullkid aka Anita Blay as she takes to the stage, one can only assume it's down to a lack of knowledge on gig etiquette. To be fair to the crowd though, Blay and her band stride onto the stage with little fuss or ceremony. For a long moment, it seems as if the audience might actually make up its collective mind to ignore her. Thankfully, this situation changes as Blay powers through the perfectly realised pop-soul of new single 'One Eye Closed' and you can feel every eye in the place fix on her. From here, the cheers grow at the end of every song.

This is excellent news because, whether they realise it or not, these people - mainstream pop fans - need a pop star like Cocknbullkid. Her new songs, which comprise the whole of her set tonight, are vivid, irresistibly hook-laden and far more sophisticated than anything released by Kate Nash or Lilly Allen in the last couple of years. However, it's her lyrics, crystal clear tonight, that really grab you. Like many great pop acts, from Pet Shop Boys to The Beautiful South, Blay's fizzy melodies hide mordent wit and a gloomy take on life. 'Hold on to Your Misery' advises the crowd tonight to "hold on to that pain in your chest/ Your most alive when you're nearest death". Meanwhile, the funky 'Mexico' features these fantastic lines: "I sold my soul/ to see how much it would get/ but that was fine/ 'cos at the time/ I wasn't really using it".

It would be wonderful if the next year sees Blay, who's been hovering on pop's fringes since 2008, cross over to the mainstream and furnish the UK top ten with music of some substance. In the meantime, however, she's given us a fantastic gig, only slightly ruined by the utter shitness of the headliner who follows her.